If the Literary Fund had existed when I arrived in London from Southampton on the 21st of May 1793, it would perhaps have paid a doctor's visit to the garret in Holborn in which my cousin de La Boüétardais[156], son of my uncle de Bedée, harboured me. It had been hoped that the change of air would do marvels towards restoring to me the strength essential to a soldier's life; but my health, instead of recovering, declined. My chest became involved; I was thin and pale, I coughed frequently, I breathed with difficulty; I had attacks of perspiration and I spat blood. My friends, who were as poor as I, dragged me from doctor to doctor. These Hippocrates kept the band of beggars waiting at their door, and then told me, for the price of one guinea, that I must bear my complaint patiently, adding: "That's all, my dear sir." Dr. Goodwyn[157], famous for his experiments relating to drowning people, made on his own person by his own prescriptions, was more generous: he assisted me with his advice gratis; but he said to me, with the harshness which he employed towards himself, that I might "last" a few months, perhaps one or two years, provided I gave up all fatigue. "Do not look forward to a long career:" that was the substance of his consultations. The certainty of my approaching end thus acquired, while increasing the natural gloom of my imagination, gave me an incredible peace of mind. This inner disposition explains a passage of the note placed at the head of the _Essai historique_[158], as well as the following passage from the _Essai_ itself: "Smitten as I am with an illness which leaves me little hope, I behold objects with a tranquil eye; the calm atmosphere of the tomb is perceptible to the traveller who is but a few days' march removed from it[159]." The bitterness of the reflections spread over the _Essai_ will therefore arouse no astonishment: I wrote that work while lying under sentence of death, between the verdict and the execution. A writer who believed himself to be drawing near his end, amid the destitution of his exile, could scarcely cast a smiling glance upon the world.